Chapter One Introduction
1. 1 Research Background
Explicit and implicit knowledge were distinguished originally in cognitivepsychology. From the perspective of cognitive psychology, explicit knowledge isacquired without central attentional resources. By contrast, implicit knowledge isobtained typically by memorizing a series of successive facts and thus makes heavydemands on working memory. Concerning the definitions of ELK and ILK, differentscholars hold different opinions.Before considering the definitions of ELK and ILK, what “linguistic knowledge”means needs to be examined first. There are two controversial positions. The first isChomsky’s point of view. He (1976) claimed that linguistic knowledge consisted ofknowledge of the features of a specific language, which were derived fromimpoverished input with the help of Universal Grammar. This view of language isinnatist and mentalist, emphasizing the function of a complex and biologicallyspecified language module in the mind of the learner. The second position, drawingon connectionist theories of language learning, as advanced by cognitive psychologistsuch as Rumelhart and McClelland (1986), viewed linguistic knowledge as comprisedof an elaborate network of nodes and internode connections of varying strengths thatdictate the ease with which specific sequences or rules could be accessed. The twopositions, however, are in agreement. Both the innatist and connectionist hold thatlinguistic competence comprises implicit knowledge. And they both make a cleardistinction between implicit and explicit linguistic knowledge.Bialystok was one of the first scholars to apply explicit knowledge and implicitknowledge to SLA. She defined the two kinds of knowledge as follows, “explicitlinguistic knowledge includes all knowledge which the learners learn consciously; andwhether the knowledge is explicit or not depends on whether the learner can expressthe knowledge; implicit linguistic knowledge is the information which the learnersacquired instinctively. The knowledge, including grammar, vocabulary, etc, which canbe used without thinking belongs to the range of implicit linguistic knowledge.
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1.2 Necessity and Objectives of the Study
From the above revision, it can be seen that there are still controversies about therelation between ELK and ILK. Therefore, this paper was intended to be served as anempirical study to evaluate the correlation between ELK and ILK.The reasons why I chose Non-English majors as subjects were as follows. Firstly,non-English majors met a lot of difficulties in English study because of the less classhours and supervision than those in high school. Their English competence decreasedrapidly. Therefore, it was necessary to investigate the compositional state of the ELKand ILK of Non-English majors in China in order to help the teachers and studentscome up with better teaching methods and learning strategies. The second reason wasthat they were in large percentage of all English learners in China. They faced severalEnglish exams in universities, such as Band-4, Band-6 and IELTS, etc. To investigatetheir current English level was necessary, which would be beneficial for theirpreparations for these exams.The aims of this paper are as follows. Firstly, this paper attempted to test the current levels of ELK and ILK of Non-English majors in China, which could helplearners and teachers have a thorough understanding of the present learning situation.The learners would know what aspects they needed to improve and the teachers couldadjust their teaching methods and strategies to help the students learn better. Secondly,this paper was intended to analyze the relationship between ELK and ILK , whichcould promote learners and teachers to better learn and teach these kinds ofknowledge in a more effective way.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Defining Explicit Linguistic Knowledge (ELK) and Implicit Linguistic Knowledge (ILK)
In this part, the definitions of linguistic knowledge, ELK and ILK are introduced.As for ELK and ILK, different scholars hold different opinions. Therefore, it isnecessary to examine the important opinions among them.Before defining ELK and ILK, it is necessary to define linguistic knowledgefirstly. Broadly speaking, there are two competing positions. The first was proposedby Chomsky (1976) claiming that linguistic competence consists of a biologicalcapacity for acquiring languages, commonly referred to as Universal Grammar.According to it, linguistic knowledge consists of the knowledge of the features of alanguage with the help of UG and learning principles, such as subset principles(Wexler & Mancini, 1987). This view was largely restricted to grammar. Itemphasizes the language module existing in the mind of the learner.Rumelhar and McClelland (1986) advanced the connectionist theories oflanguage learning. They claimed that language learning needed a general mentalcapacity for registering and storing phonological, lexical, and grammatical sequences.Linguistic knowledge emerges gradually as learners acquire new sequences,restructure their old sequences. Thus, according to this view, learning begins withinput, then the positive and negative input both contribute to the form of linguistic knowledge.
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2.2 Relationship Between Explicit and Implicit Knowledge
A number of early studies examined the relationship between learners’ implicitand explicit knowledge (e.g. Hulstijn, J & Hulstijn, W 1984; Seliger 1979; Sorace1985). Generally, there are three positions: non-interface position, strong-interfaceposition, and weak-interface position. Scholars who hold non-interface position claim that there is no relationshipbetween ELK and ILK. It means that explicit linguistic knowledge can not beconverted to implicit linguistic knowledge, vice versa. The typical scholars areKrashen and Chomsky. In Krashen’s Monitor Hypothesis, he distinguished learningand acquisition. Learning was a process which happened in classroom, but acquisitiontook place in natural settings (1981). These were two distinct processes. And they arestored in different parts in human’s brain, which means that the knowledge acquiredby these two processes are not related to each other at all. Similarly, Chomsky (1965)proposed universal grammar, which consisted of some abstract principles stored inhuman’s brain. This kind of knowledge would not change no matter how much newknowledge was learned. This position reject both the possibility of explicit linguisticknowledge transforming directly into implicit linguistic knowledge and the possibilityof implicit linguistic knowledge becoming explicit linguistic knowledge.
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Chapter Three Research Methodology.....19
3.1 Hypotheses.........19
3.2 Participants.........19
3.3 Instruments.........19
3.4 Data Collection...........22
3.5 Data Analysis......22
Chapter Four Results and Discussion.......23
4.1 The Current Level of Non-English Majors’ ILK........23
4.2 The Current Level of Non-English Majors’ ELK.......26
4.3 Comparing Learner ILK and ELK.....28
4.4 The Relationship Between Learner ILK and ELK.....31
Chapter Five Conclusion...........35
5.1 Research Findings......35
5.2 Implications........35
5.3 Significance of the Study..........37
5.4 Limitations and Further Suggestions..........37
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
This chapter will analyze the results of the tests from three aspects. Firstly,students’ current implicit linguistic knowledge will be described according to thestatistics. And the accuracy percentage of each specific grammatical structure will beanalyzed, too. Secondly, learners’ general explicit linguistic knowledge will bepresented by calculating the accuracy percentage. Then the accuracy percentage ofeach grammatical structure is calculated to evaluate how well they master thestructures. Thirdly, the relationship between their explicit linguistic knowledge andimplicit linguistic knowledge will be analyzed by Spearman Rank CorrelationAnalysis. Fourthly, the correlation between ELK and ILK of each specificgrammatical structure will be analyzed. The total score of the TGJT is 30, with one score for each sentence. Aftercalculating the scores of tests on ILK, the total accuracy percentage was 67.53%.From the statistics, we can conclude that these learners have already mastered morethan half of the grammatical points, which means that they can judge the correctnessof the sentences by intuition. But there are some grammatical structures that are notinternalized yet. The following chart shows how well they master the ILK of eachspecific grammatical point.
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Conclusion
Test on learner ILK and ELK reveals the following findings:
(1) Averagely, learner ILK is worse than learner ELK. The average accuracypercentage of learner ILK is 67.53%, while learner ELK is 69.45%. In ILK, learnersdid better in grammatical structures like DA, VC, Third Person-s, QT, AP, and RPTwith more than 70% accuracy percentage, and worse in Plural-s, S/F, MV, IA, EV,Possessive-s. In ELK, learner did better in C, MV, C, VC, Third Person-s, RPT,Plural-s, and Possessive-s, and worse in S/F, UC, QT, and EV.
(2) Generally, the result showed that learners’ ILK was positively related to ELKwith r =0.383. The higher the scores of ILK were, the higher the scores of ELK were.Therefore, Ellis’s weak-interface hypothesis was confirmed again. As for thecorrelation between the ELK and ILK of specific grammatical structure, RC, Y/NQ,VC, and RPT were strongly related. Plural-s and EQ were slightly correlated, whichmeant profound ELK guaranteed rich ILK. By contrast, ELK and ILK of QT and UCwere strongly in negative correlation. The results showed that they could rely on theirsense of language to judge the correctness of the sentence. But they could not explainthe reasons or correct the errors. Or they were more competent in explaining the rulesof these structures than judge the correctness by intuition. It also showed that highaccuracy percentage of ELK or ILK didn’t necessarily mean a learner had highlanguage proficiency. A senior learner must be competent in both of these two kindsof knowledge.
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Reference (omitted)
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